'Surge' pricing is something Uber uses to balance supply and demand. It would not be hard for proper software to look at the last X number of blocks and estimate the fee needed based on the user's priority for the transaction.

Just remember, with Bitcoin we're all riding on a ship that's still under construction.

Any usage of bitcoin is good for adoption and development. Having full blocks sooner rather than later should help us develop consensus around block size increase. People may become more amenable to Gavin's revised proposal seeing the challenges of working with just the 1mb cap

Play that out though: if someone is addicted, do you really think they'll just throw up their hands and say 'well looks like no H for me'? You might still be creating a net positive as a harm reducing, honest seller even if the consumer is addicted if they aren't forced to turn to someone violent/abusive/dishonest.

Never talk to police, anything you say can and will be used against you and never in your favor. Especially in this case, you run the risk of bringing you and him down. Just walk away and let it fizzle out.

I think you're underestimating the value of a brand and ease of use. TREZOR's biggest and most profitable consumer segment is going to be the people that don't trust themselves with security and may not be very sophisticated with technology. All they care about is 'is this product easy to use and is it secure'. You're talking about a device that is essentially a digital safe, something you need to work EVERY time and feel 100% confident in.

People are willing to pay a premium for the real deal, and TREZOR has a tremendous brand in this space right now. They should take the high road and focus on the consumer that's going to drive the real future profit.

Edit: hell, people pay premiums for name brand breakfast cereal and shaving cream, and those are consumables that have essentially the same ingredients. Now you think of if a Prius was open source and some other company made a knock off one, which one would you actually trust to transport your family? How much of a premium would you pay in that case relative to the premium for name brand breakfast cereal?

it feels like the SatoshiLabs team is reacting far too emotionally at this point and making rash decisions without fully thinking through the consequences; they should take a step back and cool off, and consider reverting any changes they've made already until they've had some time to plot out a cogent action plan

I think they also need to be a little more confident in their product; I can go to Target and buy branded and unbranded saline solution, unbranded being tremendously cheaper and essentially the same product and yet the branded companies have no problem turning a profit

pricing needs to be re-assessed, but I could have told you that before this copy cat issue even came into play; you put the price at $85, which is approximately ~3x the BWallet, and I don't see there being any issues with sales; If this was an MP3 player maybe it'd be different, but I'm not going to trust my money with some jenky Chinese-made device running a version of the TREZOR software